Suresh Chandrasekaran's Blog, page 18

Small Talk

I never really ever like what people call small talk, perhaps because I never was good at it. Small talk seemed mostly to involve the weather when first I had it used on me. 'Kya garmi hai' was where it used to start when I first hit Delhi in the month of May.On the first day, of course, I joined in vigorously, having never before encountered the furnace heat that Delhi specialized in. True,

Offensive uncertainty

The thing about social media is that you get to know mainly of what offends people, what outrages them. After a few hours on it, you get a certain impression about human beings as being compressed cans of outrage in search of a reason to vent; as frowns of displeasure trawling the world for reasons to be displeased.It is a given, of course, that people assume offense in anything that others do if

The Righteous and the Self-righteous

"Too many people are getting righteous these days. That's the problem with the world," I declaimed.You know how it is. One of those days where you feel that only you have the insight into how to make the world a cleaner, better place. Like it happens with all of us every now and then. Of course, if that's the way you feel all the time, you become a social reformer or a politician or, at least, a

Success and Happiness - Concluded

If you indeed have been going through this series on 'Success and Happiness', it would seem to you that Serotinin-the mood stabilizer; Endorphins - the painkiller/pleasure chemicals; Dopamine - the Reward chemical; and Oxytocin - the Love chemical exist in watertight compartments. It was convenient to discuss them that way but, in reality, they tend to coexist. AND more than one get produced by

Success and Happiness - V

The one thing that gets everyone interested is this word 'Love'. I should have titled this post the 'Love Chemical', perhaps, because that is what Oxytocin is - the chemical that causes the happiness related to love.It is not just romantic love which sets off the Oxytocin. All human relations - parental, sibling, friendships, camaraderie - and even your relationship with your pets gives you a

Success and Happiness - IV

Dopamine, one may say, is the reward chemical. Endorphins may give you pleasure but, by and large, the pleasure that they give is meant to suppress pain. Dopamine gives you pleasure as a reward for achieving something.To be sure, you get a dopamine kick out of food. But, then, you should remember that the body's mechanisms were developed at a time when starvation was the norm. So feeding the body

Success and Happiness - III

Health is such a strange thing. When you are not in good health, you are sure that all you need to be happy is to be restored to normal. When you are normal, though, it seems irrelevant to your happiness.Low levels of serotonin and the consequent depression is like that. When you are depressed, to not be depressed is sufficient happiness. When your mood stabilizes, though, it's just business as

Success and Happiness - II

I try to find a bit more about happiness and, presto, Chemistry rears its ugly head. As usual. I mean, I escape a BSc in Chemistry only to land in Chemical Engineering so I should sort of have expected it, I suppose. Especially since escaping into an MBA in Finance only landed me in a fertilizer company and back to dealing in calculations relating to chemical reactions all over again!So,

Success and happiness

Through my younger days, I was essentially taught that success MEANT happiness. Yeah, success then was all about getting enough education credentials to get into Engineering or medicine - the only two certain means of being employed. There really was no difference between the success and happiness when put that way. I mean, when success means avoiding potential starvation, you hardly see it as

High Ground

"I don't understand why people get so worked up about what celebrities say or do?""When have you understood anything?"There...the stage was set as usual! Things have come to such a pass that I'm actually happy when the first insult has been hurled my way. Otherwise, it is like that Chinese torture where the victim suffers the torment of not knowing when the next drop of water will fall on him. I